Ecosystem

• An ecosystem consists of the biological community that

occurs in some locale, and the physical and chemical
factors that make up its non-living or abiotic
environment.

• The study of ecosystems mainly consists of the study of

certain processes that link the living, or biotic,
components to the non-living, or abiotic, components.

• Energy transformations and biogeochemical cycling

are the main processes that comprise the field of
ecosystem ecology.
• Studies of individuals are concerned mostly about physiology, reproduction,
development or behavior, and studies of populations usually focus on the habitat
and resource needs of individual species, their group behaviors, population
growth, and what limits their abundance or causes extinction.

• Studies of communities examine how populations of many species interact with

one another, such as predators and their prey, or competitors that share common
needs or resources.

• In ecosystem ecology we put all of this together and, insofar as we can, we try to
understand how the system operates as a whole. This means that, rather than
worrying mainly about particular species, we try to focus on major functional
aspects of the system.

• These functional aspects include such things as the amount of energy that is
produced by photosynthesis, how energy or materials flow along the many steps in
a food chain, or what controls the rate of decomposition of materials or the rate at
which nutrients are recycled in the system.
Components of an Ecosystem

Biotic components
Aiotic components

• Sunlight • Primary
• Temperature producers
• Precipitation • Herbivores
• Water or • Carnivores
Moisture • Ominvores
• Soil • Detritivores
Processes of Ecosystem

ecosystems
have energy
flows ecosystems cycle
materials
Energy flows and material cycle
 The Transformation of Energy

• The transformations of energy in an ecosystem begin first with the input of energy
from the sun.

• Energy from the sun is captured by the process of photosynthesis. Carbon dioxide
is combined with hydrogen (derived from the splitting of water molecules) to
produce carbohydrates (CHO). Energy is stored in the high energy bonds of
adenosine triphosphate, or ATP (see lecture on photosynthesis).

• The prophet Isaah said "all flesh is grass", earning him the title of first ecologist,
because virtually all energy available to organisms originates in plants.

• Because it is the first step in the production of energy for living things, it is called
primary production.

• Herbivores obtain their energy by consuming plants or plant products, carnivores

eat herbivores, and detritivores consume the droppings and carcasses of us all.
 Food Chain
• Food Chain is the sequence of populations of
an ecosystem which allows food and energy to
go through it in a specified direction.

• Those on the lower end of chain become food

for the ones who are on upper end.

• The one who is at top of the food chain is not

consumed by any.
Food Chain
•Energy from the sun, captured by plant photosynthesis,
flows from trophic level to trophic level via the food chain.

•A trophic level is composed of organisms that make a

living in the same way, that is they are all primary
producers (plants), primary consumers (herbivores) or
secondary consumers (carnivores).

•Dead tissue and waste products are produced at all levels.

Scavengers, detritivores, and decomposers collectively
account for the use of all such "waste" -- consumers of
carcasses and fallen leaves may be other animals, such as
crows and beetles, but ultimately it is the microbes that
finish the job of decomposition.

•Not surprisingly, the amount of primary production varies

a great deal from place to place, due to differences in the
amount of solar radiation and the availability of nutrients
and water.
 Types of food chains

A smaller organism Micro organisms live

Plant eating animal is
consumes part of a on dead organic
eaten by a flesh
larger host and may matter
eating animal
itself be parasitized by
even smaller
organisms

Predator Parasite Saprophytic

Chain Chain Chain
 Components of a food chain

Producers Consumers Decomposers

• first
• second
• tertiary and
• the fourth
order
 The Producers
• Producers are the beginning of a simple food chain.
Producers are plants and vegetables.

• Plants are at the beginning of every food chain that involves

the Sun. All energy comes from the Sun and plants are the
ones who make food with that energy. They use the
process of photosynthesis. Plants also make loads of other
nutrients for other organisms to eat.

• There are also photosynthetic protists that start food

chains. You might find them floating on the surface of the
ocean acting as food for small unicellular animals
 Consumers
Primary Consumers or Herbivores
• They are the plant eaters of the chain
• Example: Mouse

Secondary Consumers or Carnivores

• Secondary consumers eat the primary consumers.
• Example: Cat

Tertiary consumer or Omnivores

• These are consumers that eat the secondary and primary consumers
• Example: Wolf
 Decomposers

• Whenever something that was alive dies, the

decomposers get it.

• Decomposers break down nutrients in the dead "stuff"

and return it to the soil.

• The producers can then use the nutrients and elements

once it's in the soil.

• The decomposers complete the system, returning

essential molecules to the producers.
 However
• Energy transfer through the food chain is inefficient.

• In many circumstances the principal energy input is not green plants but
dead organic matter. These are called detritus food chains.

• the organization of biological systems is much more complicated than can

be represented by a simple "chain". There are many food links and chains
in an ecosystem, and we refer to all of these linkages as a food web.

• Food webs can be very complicated, where it appears that "everything is

connected to everything else", and it is important to understand what are
the most important linkages in any particular food web.
 Why there are more herbivores than
carnivores
• In a food chain, energy is passed from one link to another.

• When a herbivore eats, only a fraction of the energy (that it gets from the plant
food) becomes new body mass; the rest of the energy is lost as waste or used up
by the herbivore to carry out its life processes (e.g., movement, digestion,
reproduction).

• Therefore, when the herbivore is eaten by a carnivore, it passes only a small

amount of total energy (that it has received) to the carnivore.

• Of the energy transferred from the herbivore to the carnivore, some energy will be
"wasted" or "used up" by the carnivore.

• The carnivore then has to eat many herbivores to get enough energy to grow.
Because of the large amount of energy that is lost at each link, the amount of
energy that is transferred gets lesser and lesser ...
The further along the food chain you
go, the less food remains available
The energy pyramid alongside shows many
trees & shrubs providing food and energy to
giraffes.

As we go up, there are fewer giraffes than trees

& shrubs and even fewer lions than giraffes ...

as we go further along a food chain, there are

fewer and fewer consumers.

In other words, a large mass of living things at

the base is required to support a few at the top
... many herbivores are needed to support a
few carnivores
Most food chains have no more than
four or five links
There cannot be too many links in a single food
chain because the animals at the end of the chain
would not get enough food (and hence energy) to
stay alive.

Most animals are part of more than one food chain

and eat more than one kind of food in order to
meet their food and energy requirements. These
interconnected food chains form a food web.
Food Web
• In nature, food chain relationships are not
isolated. They are very complex, as one organism
may form the food source of many organisms.

• Thus, instead of a simple linear food chain, there

is a web like structure formed by these
interlinked food chains. Such interconnected
matrix of food chains is called 'food web'.

• Food web can be defined as, "a network of food

chains which are interconnected at various
trophic levels, so as to form a number of feeding
connections amongst different organisms of a
biotic community".

• Food webs are indispensable in ecosystems as

they allow an organism to obtain its food from
more than one type of organism of the lower
trophic level.
• Generally, a food web operates according to taste and food
preferences of the organism, yet availability of food source and
other compulsions are equally important.
A Food Web in Terrestrial and Aquatic
Ecosystem
Case Study: Bat disease could allow
insects to destroy crops
A deadly disease to bats could become a major financial
headache for agriculture, costing Ohio farmers as much as
$1.7 billion a year.

A new study is the first to tie a dollar value to the millions

of crop-damaging insects that bats routinely devour each
year. Now, the night-flying hunters face the threat of a
fungal disease that kills most of the bats it infects.
 White Nose Syndrome
• White-nose syndrome, named for the fungus that
spreads over bats while they hibernate, has killed at
least 1 million bats in 15 states and Canada since it was
discovered in New York in 2006.

• On March 30, Ohio officials announced that they found

the disease among bats hibernating in an abandoned
limestone mine in the Wayne National Forest.

• They feared it will march through Ohio as it has nearly

everywhere else.
 The Effect
• In the April edition of the journal Science, researchers estimate that
U.S farmers would see annual economic losses of $3.7 billion to $53
billion if the nation's bat population were wiped out.

• Losses to Ohio farmers would range from $740 million to $1.7

billion a year through a combination of crop damage and costs to
purchase additional pesticides.

• The biggest losses, according to the study, would be felt in Darke,

Putnam, Mercer, Wood and Pickaway counties, which have the
most land in crop production. Losses in each county would range
from $3million a year to more than $40million.

• The estimates are based largely on studies that examined the

benefits of bats to Texas cotton growers.
 Importance of Bats’
• Bats are prodigious insect eaters. Studies have shown that a single colony of 150
big brown bats can eat as many as 1.3 million insects a year.

• White-nose syndrome causes bats to burn through their fat reserves before winter
ends, leaving them starving and with no insects to hunt for food.

• Paul Cryan, a U.S. Geological Survey research biologist and a co-author of the
study, said the estimates should serve as a starting point for a discussion of bats'
importance to people.

• In Ohio, bats eat pests that include cucumber beetles, stink bugs and leafhoppers,
said Marne Titchenell, an Ohio State University Extension wildlife program
specialist.

• By eating moths that develop from crop-damaging worms, bats break the
reproductive cycle.